His arms wrapped tighter around her, almost squeezing her. Like she was the only thing keeping him from passing out.
The girl leaned against her forehead more against his chest. Her small hand found his shirt, the same one he used every time to work, and held on. She didn't pull away. Didn't ask anything. Just stayed there letting him be. Letting him release his ghosts.
He pressed his cheek to the top of her head and breathed her in.
For a short passage of time, he didn't move. Didn't speak. He just kneeled there, eyes closed, letting the measly weight of her hold him together. His tears kept coming, they were steady, silent and didn't slow down. Tracing the fine and aged lines down his face.
The old woman watched them for a little while.
But even then her own composure began to crack. She was no machine after all. She just let her husband express himself, for she knew he was far more sentimental between the two. She always kept her cool, kept her calm and was kind all the same.
However she felt all the same sorrow as he did.
All the same heartache.
Her hand on the girl's back tightened, her fingers curling themselves slightly more into the fabric. She pressed her faintly trembling lips, as she tried to compose herself and took a deep breath. But the breath she took in only made it worse. It came out uneven, shaky, and her eyes…
Her eyes began to fill with water all the same as well.
"You're back…" she whispered, her voice barely holding together. "That's why that old fool is acting like that."
She tried to smile. Tried to make it light. But her voice cracked before she could finish the next words.
"We thought we might lose you—"
The girl shifted her head in the old man's comforting arm, facing his armpit, trying not to look at their faces. Her smile was still there, but softer now, so soft it was hard to tell if it would last any longer.
"Oh, not again…" she said quietly, almost teasing, almost trying to laugh it off. "This isn't the first time, Pops… you're being silly…"
But her voice wasn't as steady as she wanted it to be.
That kind of feeling is too strong to hide from. Especially for a child.
The old woman stepped closer and wrapped her arms around both of them, pulling them in, pressing the girl gently against her chest, one of her hands coming up to cradle the back of her head. She wanted to feel her warmth, which seemed so fleeting.
And that was when it changed. The girl's courage.
Her smile wavered almost immediately with the touch of the woman's hand. Her bravery, the same one she'd been holding up like a shield to protect herself, simply wasn't enough anymore. Not with the old man's tears still wet on her shoulder. Not with the old woman's arms trembling around her. Not with the word lose still hanging in the air.
Her face crumpled entirely.
The tears came, before she could even process it.
They simply appeared, tracing down her cheeks before anything else happened—as though her body gave out before her mind could catch up.
"No—not again—", The words died. The tears weren't slow anymore. They came fast, hot, and the sob that followed tore out of her so suddenly she seemed herself.
"I didn't want to cry—", she tried to finish the brave claim about not wanting to shed a tear. However it was too late, and before she could truly process it, she had already given in to the crack in her invisible armor.
Her small hands grabbed fistfuls of his shirt as she pressed her face into his chest, and her whole body started shaking leaned against him.
Her bravery gave in, she couldn't hide her true emotions behind this curtain. She was just a child who had been scared, who had missed them, and who had almost lost everything.
That tiny girl in front of me, she just held onto her grandpa and let it all out.
And the old man held her tighter, his cheek still pressed to her hair. His own tears never stopped. They fell into her hair and down his face, eventually mixing with hers. He didn't try to hold them back anymore.
The old woman let out a shaky breath and leaned into them both, her hand moving gently over the girl's back, mumbling something soft and meaningless, over and over, back and forth.
None of them moved.
They simply existed there on the wooden floor, wrapped up in each other, letting the tears come and go and letting the silence stitch them back together.
And in that moment, for everyone in this café, the world outside didn't exist. It was just this. Just them.
Simply love, in its truest form.
I felt it, this love. Not as in where I was part of it, but…
…it had reached me.
For once, there was no overthinking.
It pressed tightly against my chest like something inside me was being rekindled with this heartfelt moment.
I couldn't look away. The way she held onto them. The way they held onto her. It was raw, unfiltered, the kind of love I don't think I've ever learned how to give.
Nor had ever received.
I was completely stunned observing them, as one singular thought pierced itself into my the roots of my consciousness.
She has so much will to live.
What was happening in front of me, watching that little girl, fight so hard made me realize something else as well. That scene… it was merely a catalyst for another dose of a drug called pity.
Because while she held on, so clearly, so desperately, I realized I never really did try to.
I had been moving forward, yes. Walking, talking, existing. But not like that. Not with that purpose. Not with that determination to stay, no matter how hard it got.
I never lived. I merely existed in time.At the time I didn't know what was happening to her. She had a Spinal Cord Tumor. I didn't know that she was fighting for her life every week, going to the hospital at just a minor inconvenience, and that today was the day of her new life. A life without all that. A life where she could finally make some friends, go play with other kids, go to school for the first time. She had beaten this tumor, with her sheer will to live.
However instead of feeling warmth and happiness for her in that moment, I turned inward and felt envious.
Pathetic isn't it? Absurd some might say even.
How could I be envious of a little child, that is fighting of cancer, trying to hold on with every fiber of her fragile self.
How could I feel envy, of her when she was facing all that, alone. No friends around, her parents abandoned her with all lost hope for her, only having their grandparents at her side.
How dare I.
It is truly preposterous.
Yet it was the truth.
I wanted to feel like she was.
I wanted to be as strong as she was.
I wanted, for once, feel like something more than this empty carapace of skin and flesh.
Maybe that's why I told you all of this. Why I'm telling you about the cafe, about that day. Because you need to understand what that little girl meant to me. Not just who she was, but what she did to me without even trying. Without even knowing who I was.Her display of valor, awakened compassion inside of me.
Maybe it was my own pathetic state that made me feel it. Maybe I was just so moved that something inside me wanted to ease her pain. After all no matter who you are, as long as you have a heart, you will feel empathy for her.
Or maybe I was subconsciously trying to proof that I was still in fact, a human and did indeed have a heart.
Because watching her, watching them, it reminded me of something. My parents. The love they had for me, even if it was for a short time. A love so strong, so true, that I'd spent my whole life longing for it again without ever admitting it to myself and instead dismissing me as undeserving of it.
So perhaps that's why, when they finally calmed down, I decided to ask if she liked music.
Perhaps it was just coincidence that she didn't know if she did. Perhaps that was why she looked at me with a mix of confusion and curiosity. She had never really played anything before; sure, she'd listened to a song or two in the radio but she never played music, and rarely listened to it, for she has been in that hospital for too long.
Yet the instant I showed it to her, I saw her eyes fill with something I couldn't name. Joy, maybe. But bigger than that. Something that lit her up from the inside. For a second, I felt like I was giving her something no one else could. A stupid thought, maybe. But it was the first time in years I'd felt like I had any reason to be here.
What it made her feel was beyond anything I could put into words.
Her grandparents saw it too. They begged me to teach music at her school, that she was enrolling. A small place, nothing fancy. She didn't have any friends there, after all she was in and out of the hospital so often. It would be difficult for her to make any friends, children can be ruthless at times. But at least, she could have something to look forward to. Something that wasn't needles, tests and waiting to see if she would wake up the next day.
At least she would have music.
At least she would have me. They said
That's how I became a teacher at that school. With a little help from Mr. Kikuchi, who bribed the director, seemingly doing me a last favor, to get me into that school.
And that's how I ended up having some happy moments in this miserable life of mine. The classes. Watching her smile during our private piano sessions, as she finally was able to play something on her own, giving me that soothing peace of heart. That same warm smile I knew from her grandparents, spreading across her face whenever she listened to me playing the piano as well.
For a while, I had something. Something that wasn't just surviving. Something that felt like I almost mattered.
Now I'm standing there again.
The same school. The same gates.
And the same stairs leading up to the entrance, the ones she always struggled up, step by step, with no choice but to take them slowly.
But now there is nothing left for me here. The classrooms are quiet. Her chair in the corner has been empty for a long time now. I still remember the last time I played the piano was with her. The day before she broke down in front of the bathroom sink in the morning.
Maybe that's why I feel this strange sense of duty. Because she always told me—even though she was just a kid, even though she didn't fully understand what she was saying—that I should show others what I showed her. The music. The joy. The thing that made her feel alive.
She said, even if she did disappear one day, to not give up on life. I never really gave that too much thought. After all she had just so much energy.
However as if she knew deep down that she would disappear, she kept repeating those words to me every Friday after our piano session.
And well…she did.
The tumor came back.
Metastasis, the doctors said.
And this time it was here to claim what it failed to do so the first time.
Her.
It was all so abrupt. One day she was showing me her favorite piece of music from a pianist she had found online. The next Monday, I was just sitting there, almost lifeless, in front of that piano, never too open it again.
Or at least that is what I swore that day.
Which is why this school is just a place now. People who to me look all the same.
Before I could say goodbye, she was sent away.
Another hospital in the United States, with state of the art equipment. Her sister lived there too.
As such her grandparents closed the shop soon after.
No explanations. No calls. Just gone for a month straight.
And when they returned the silence said enough. I wasn't strong enough to ask what happened to her.
If she was still alive.
I'd rather live with the possibility of her being alive, than with the certainty of her being dead.
Sometimes I still stop in front of the piano, and for a moment, I see her.
Sitting there with her legs barely reaching the pedals and her fingers hovering softly over before pressing down the keys.
She never quite got that right.
All the the time she had always tried to learn a certain work. One that she saw somewhere on the internet, I assumed.
It wasn't a piece she had mastered fast. It was one she returned to, again and again, every time we sat down together.
The most cruel thing is about this story is: Her name was Hope.
And somehow that always felt fitting, since she never gave up. Not on that piece, nor anything else.
I believe she enjoyed the way it sounded when it almost worked.
The last time I saw Hope she was finally able to play it through without interrupting herself. As if that was her last gift for me. A testament of her effort.
I think it was called
Requiem of a Winter Night.